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Decomposition of Zimbabwe’s stalled fertility change: a two-sex approach to estimating education and employment effects

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Abstract

The emergence of fertility stalling in Zimbabwe post 2005 highlights the need for continued search for determinants of fertility change. Despite research showing the efficacy of two-sex modelling in understanding men’s influence in reproductive behaviour, there is a lack of studies on Zimbabwe’s fertility changes employing two-sex modelling. This study addresses this gap by applying the Oaxaca–Blinder decomposition technique in a two-sex framework to the study of the emergence of fertility stalling in Zimbabwe. Data on recent fertility from the 2005–2006 and 2010–2011 Zimbabwe Demographic and Health Surveys for 12,235 women in unions, incorporating their partners’ characteristics, were analysed. Results indicate that stalling of fertility transition in Zimbabwe cannot be explained by compositional changes in individual female characteristics. Instead, changes in coefficients related to education characteristics of men were more positively associated with rebounds in marital fertility. The study concludes that, despite focusing on a limited range variables, incorporating characteristics of women’s partners potentially enhances understanding of fertility stalling in Zimbabwe.

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(adapted from Bongaarts 1978)

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  1. University of the Witwatersrand, Room 10, Humanities Graduate Centre, South West Engineering Building Private Bag 3, Wits, Johannesburg, 2050, South Africa

    Pedzisai Ndagurwa & Clifford Odimegwu

  2. MRC/Wits Agincourt Unit, Rural Public Health and Health Transitions Research Unit, Bushbuckridge, South Africa

    Pedzisai Ndagurwa

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Appendix

Appendix

See Tables 3 and 4.

Table 3 Test results of slopes of trends in marital TFRs
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Table 4 Sample composition, regression coefficients and decomposition results
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Ndagurwa, P., Odimegwu, C. Decomposition of Zimbabwe’s stalled fertility change: a two-sex approach to estimating education and employment effects. J Pop Research 36, 35–63 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12546-019-09219-8

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